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A lot of people got all teary-eyed and red-faced as The Avs and Beige Wings played a game eerily reminiscent of the old "Blood Feud" Days last night that has many people thinking the rivalry is renewed. Hell nearly every, Red Wing and Red Wing fan is saying Lappy's hit on Lidstrom was dirty. And visions of Claude LeMieux on Draper danced in everyone's head. So I can understand if people want to get carried away.The Blood Feud nostalgia then bubbled over as Mike Babcock and Tony Granato got into a heated exchange that invoked memories of the Crawford-Bowman argument many moons ago.

But every outside observer with hockey knowledge I have seen has called it clean. Eric McErlain said:

Colorado's Ian Laperriere delivered a hard, but undeniably clean, check to Detroit captain Nicklas Lidstrom. The hit pinned Lidstrom to the glass just inside the Avalanche defensive zone, and his head appeared to snap back and hit the plexiglass.

And Deadspin Closer, 4th period writer, and Fanhouse blogger Greg Wyshanski called the hit "legal and fairly clean".

The Blood Feud was so fun because the two teams were battling for the Stanley Cup, and the winner would get it. The Avs are currently in 10th place in the Western Conference. The Blood Feud was fun because the teams were evenly matched, Detroit swept the season series 4-0, outscored the Avs 11-2 and haven't even allowed an Avs goal in over 214 minutes.

No last night's game wasn't a return to the Blood Feud, but it was a chance for a wakeup call for two recently struggling teams, and Lappy's hit on Lidstrom provided the spark that could ignite a run for both teams. Babcock recognized that spark and capitalized by sending out Downie, yelling at Granato, and firing up his team. Quenneville responded by ignoring the incident, sending his assistant to yell back at Babcock, and taking an excruciatingly stupid and ultimately devastating bench minor

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Jibblescribbits

7 comments:

I agree - one relatively meaningless (as much so as one can get, anyway) February game is hardly something to rekindle a feud like that one over, but it was certainly fun to reminisce and see little leftover sparks of it.

I don't know that Laperriere needed to jam his elbow up where he did, but the hit still look clean to me (all the more reason why Nick's ensuing injury and disorientation was so weird and scary). I suppose when people are searching for a reason that's all it takes.

Yeah, I agree he got his arm up a bit, and probably shouldn't have. But a dirty hit, in my book, is one where the player is trying to hurt another player. I think Lappy was trying to rock Lidstrom's world, but not hurt him (if that makes sense).

But how man hits do you see where a guy goes in with his shoulder, and then lifts his arm a little to finish his check, 15 a night?

Yeah, I thought the 'elbow' was the follow through as Lappy pushed off of Liddy to try and play the puck he'd just won. Still, Beige Wings can't be happy with the complete pwnership of the Avs, they have to tighten the vag and throw a hissy about something...

I'd say sure, it might not have been perfectly clean, but it never looked like Laperriere wanted to really mess Nick up or anything, he was just taking the opportunity he had, and acceptably so.

There was almost nothing worse about that hit than practically 50% of the others you see on any given night - it just had a worse result on a particularly valuable player at an inopportune time, so of course everyone gets all up in arms. Rationality? What's that? :P

Since you linked to me and claimed I said it was a dirty hit, I thought I'd share what I actually wrote.

"Laperriere crushed Lidstrom. Crushed him. And if not for the elbow to the jaw, it would have been hard to argue with any part of that hit. Laperriere did his job. And he took his medicine, which would have been doled out had the hit been completely clean or not."

The rest of the post is actually fairly complimentary of Laperriere. I have no problem with the hit. Like I said, he did his job. I don't fault him at all and I definitely respect his comments after the game.

I can give you fifty other posts where I've ragged on you guys if you'd like to reference something more tangible than that.

Actually i wanted to link to your post because I thought it was fairly rational and reasonable about last night. I nearly mentioned it, but it kinda got lost as I cut out other parts.

But I've read your site before, and know you are pretty subtle at times. When you say " And if not for the elbow to the jaw, it would have been hard to argue with any part of that hit."it still sounds as if you are subtly saying it was dirty.

And yes you were complimentary of Lappy. I'm sorry if the way I linked to your post came across as calling you a whiner